Absentee voting urged in Virginia

RICHMOND | Ever considered voting absentee? State and local election officials in Virginia wish you would.

With an unprecedented tsunami of energized voters expected to flood the polls in an emotional, historic election, absentee voting could help avoid the hassle and shorten long lines on Election Day.

Virginia doesn’t have early voting, as many states now do. There are 17 criteria under which Virginia voters qualify to cast absentee ballots.

Pregnant? You’re OK.

Planning a vacation in early November or worried that Nov. 4 could be a bear of a long day at the office? You qualify.

“In Virginia, we have excuse-based absentee voting, but we are encouraging people, if you do have a reason, then vote absentee,” said Rokey W. Suleman II, the voter registrar in the state’s largest locality, Fairfax County.

Mr. Suleman is expecting up to 80 percent of Fairfax County’s nearly 681,000 registered voters — more than half a million — to cast ballots.

He expected about 50,000 absentee ballots to have been cast by the close of business Monday, 15 days ahead of the election. In 2004, total absentee voting in Fairfax County was 53,488.

Polls have shown a tight race between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama in the state, which last backed a Democrat for president in 1964.

In 2004, Fairfax County employed 2,400 people to work at polling precincts on Election Day. This year, Mr. Suleman has hired 3,100.

Across the state, the story is the same.

Nancy Rodrigues, the state’s top election official as executive secretary of the State Board of Elections, tells all who will listen that she’s already voted absentee and implores others to see whether they qualify to do the same.

In Roanoke, registrar Beryl Brooks said voters shouldn’t expect an easy 15- or 20-minute wait in a short line on Election Day. She has already blown her office’s budget hiring 239 election officers to work the polls next month compared with 167 four years ago.

There already have been reports of absentee ballot problems.

The Republican Party of Virginia said it has received reports of voters in localities such as Chesterfield, Fairfax and Henrico counties getting duplicate absentee ballots in the mail.

The party asked Miss Rodrigues to stop registrars in affected localities from counting their absentee ballots until after 7 p.m. Nov. 4 and said the issue may stem from errors in printing mailing labels for the ballots.

“We trust that you share our concern and recognition of the potential for this mistake to undermine the integrity of the upcoming election and will take action immediately, today, before any local electoral board is permitted to compound the mistake,” Cleta Mitchell, the party’s general counsel, wrote in a letter to Miss Rodrigues dated Friday.

Board spokesman Ryan Enright said Miss Rodrigues was aware of the complaints and is expected to respond Wednesday.

Mr. Suleman said that his office had been directed by the secretary to delay processing ballots until further notice, but that the only duplicate ballots he was aware were sent out from his office were ones mailed to voters such as military members who frequently move and would not have received an initial ballot.

“I don’t know of any situation where we have just mailed out two ballots to the same person through a computer error,” he said. “I don’t know of that occurring at all.”